Now, I myself live in the Midwest of America and have recently found myself married. Theoretically and statistically then, I am at increased risk of obesity.

I’ve never really paid much attention to people who have told me that I might put on weight around the time of my wedding and then after it – I would just continue my routine of exercise and I’d be right as rain. However, with seven weeks to go until my wedding day things started becoming more stressful. Work and planning a wedding on another continent started to build up, exercise pretty much ground to a halt for seven weeks straight. In fact, in June according to my exercise tracker I logged around 1,800 calories through running and other strenuous exercise compared to around 11 times that the month before. I also ate and drank way more than I normally would – I was basically living off takeaways and consumed alcohol roughly every day.

The impact that this has had on me now that I’ve returned from the honeymoon is obvious. I’ve gained around 5% in body weight, I look fatter and my fitness is poor. Today I ran 6km in the time that I would have expected to run 7km and felt very worn out afterwards. Yesterday I had to sit out of 10 minutes of Judo due to being too tired to continue – this is the first time that this has ever happened.

What do I do about this? I have decided that I need a plan and that is the purpose of this post. I am determined that I will burn at least 500 calories every day through strenuous exercise (walking and even weight lifting does not count towards this). I will continue this for all of July and then if I can do that, I will aim to continue until the end of the year. For my body weight this is roughly a 5km run, 16km cycle or 60 minutes of Judo.

So far I have completed two days of this challenge:

2nd July – Judo 80 minutes.

3rd July – Running 6km.

The ultimate aim of this is to improve on my 19m02s 5km Personal Best before Christmas.